Tag: pheromones

1949 06-121 The Evil Queen Bee seducing Her retinue
1950 06-121 Let ME find the path for you, my pretties

PREVIOUSLY:  A traumatized Chastity and Penance, naked and vulnerable, are led by Channah into the honeycomb, a mysterious structure used by the demons for travel, finding it dark and silent and sterile enough to make them feel like they are being cut off from the world all over again.  NOW:

With her sixth step, the silent darkness ruptured, practically exploding into light.  Despite Channah’s warning, of course, they were startled and surprised.  Of course, they jumped involuntarily, causing her to chortle merrily, as images swam into focus around them—organic shapes of flora and fauna, geometric ones of geography and buildings, on each of the six walls of the room, with a seventh billowing from smoke into clarity above them, and even a flickering below them like the floor itself might start to resolve into something—

“No!” Channah gasped as if scandalized, covering their eyes with her hands.  “I saw you looking down, Penance Batonnoir!  You saw the floor spark, didn’t you?  Clever girl—too clever by half for your own good, isn’t that right, Chas?”

“Very much so, Domina,” Chas had to agree, sounding amused and bemused at the same time. 

“Don’t you dare look down, Penance girl.  Just one stray moment of curiosity—and I know you, you’re curious about everything—and gravity might drag the three of us straight down before I could even teach you about the sheets of the Honeycomb!”  She giggled.  “And since you have no business leaving my sheet, so to speak, that’s a skill you’ll never need anyway.  So… let’s spend this week exploring my sheets only, shall we?  In your own sheet, it’s simple:  Back and to the left is always home.  Always.  Back and to the right is where you just came from, unless that happens to be your home, in which case it’s determined like the other four faces,” she kind-of explained, turning them 150 degrees counterclockwise and guiding them—with her hands still over their eyes and counting:  “One.  It’s already gone.”  But she kept her hands on their eyes until she announced:  “Two.”  Then she brought her hands back down around their necks.  “Three.  Four.  Five.  Watch your pretty toes!”  And then she finished authoritatively, “Six!” drowning out the girls’ tentative “Seven and a half” (precise Penny) and “eight” (casual Chas). As well-matched as they were physically, there was little chance there was any actual difference to speak of between their respective strides.

“Now.  I need you to move just over here…” she guided them to the right, and then forward, maneuvering them around the outside of the glass cube.  They immediately noticed there were chains hanging from the upper rail and rings embedded into the lower rail, on this side.  “Now kneel down, and stay over here on the side, out of the main path.  You don’t want to get in the way of any important people.  And since everyone who uses the honeycomb is a succubus or accompanying a succubus, you can presume there will always be at least one person much more important than you, in here.  Got it?”

“Yes, Domina,” they chorused unconvincingly, getting what she was saying, but not why she was saying it.

“For the same reason, to make sure you’re in a respectful position if any of your betters come across you, I want you down on your knees.”  She was unfastening Chastity from the leash she shared with Penny as she spoke.  “Go on, kneel, I know the floor hurts a little but we have a strict rule, animals left in the honeycomb are always hitched.”

“‘Left?!’”  Penny asked, scared.  “‘Hitched?!’” Chas protested.

“Ohh… come on, Chastity!” she teased her, thereby easily ignoring Penny’s question.  “Who’s your cowgirl?”

“You are, Domina,” Chastity answered, embarrassed but also a little excited.  “See?” she kissed the back of her head as she pushed the girl down to the floor.  “What good little hucattle you two are.”  And with that, she locked each girl’s collar to one of the rings in the floor, Penny’s to the ring nearest the iron door, and Chas’s to the ring nearest the honeycomb, spacing them about six feet apart.

“Mistress?”  Penny squeaked.  “Domina?  Please, you aren’t going to leave us, are you?”

“Aww… my little poodle.  You’re a grown-up!  Don’t tell me you’re still afraid of the dark, darling?” she asked, managing to sound both sympathetic and irritated at once, as she pulled up on Penny’s bound wrists, hard, causing the girl to whine and shuffle her knees forward to ease the pressure on her shoulders, before using one of the chains hanging from the top bar to hold her wrists up and behind her in the strappado position. 

“Not the dark per se, Domina,” Penny squeaked, sounding a little whiny and pathetic, even to herself.  “But, it’s just—this—today—after the trigger—the honeycomb, Mistress!”

“Aww… does the honeycomb bother you?”  she pouted distractedly.

“It’s just… kind of upsetting, Domina…”  Chastity chimed in, her voice a little uneven, sounding even to herself like she had doubts about what she was saying.

“Oh, you poor little dears,” she said regretfully, locking Chastity’s arms into the strappado position.  “Unfortunately, I have to make an appearance here at Sademtsaowah.  Half an hour is  about the minimum I need to linger here to be confident I’ve given all—well, almost all—of the damned enough time to wrap their empty skulls around the fact they need to attend to me here.  Most of them react faster than that most of the time, but taken as a herd…” she shrugged.  “It takes time to keep the number of stragglers down.  Now,” she began, stepping over the bar into the cube, heading toward the iron door.  “You g—”

“Can’t we please come with you, Domina?”  Chastity pleaded frantically.

“Please, Domina, I promise we’ll be good girls!”  Penance added.

Sounding firmer, she emphasized:  “I have a great deal to do here and want to get as much of it done as possible, in those thirty minutes so I can give you sweet little love muffins mommy’s full attention on our honeymoon!”  They heard her turning and stepping toward the door.

“Please can you leave us with the guards Domina, please?!”  Chastity pleaded.  “We’ll be ever so well-behaved!”

“We—we’ll be a credit to you, Domina!”  Penny assured her.

She hesitated, and then turned back towards them, slowly, seeing the hunger in their eyes, not just for her, but for the light she was radiating.  A thoughtful, calculating look crept into her eyes, and just the hint of a smirk lifted the corner of her lips.  When she saw that both of her girls had caught the look on her face, and that it made them both quail like red-headed stepchildren, she bit her lip and pressed her knees together, sniffing deliberately and sighing with pleasure at their sudden burst of lambchop panic….

Literature Section “06-121 Led Astray”—more material available at TheRemainderman.com—Part 121 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1101 words—Accompanying Images:  1949-1950—Published 2025-05-20—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.


1931 06-120 Faerie Light of the Honeycomb
1947 06-120 Blacklight in the Wilderness
1948 06-120 Begging her to show them the way

PREVIOUSLY:  Chastity and Penance, under Channah’s literal and metaphorical spells, have been ritually debased, used badly, ridden hard, and victim-shamed.  Channah, in high spirits from a gathering more successful than any of the succubae can remember, leads the exhausted and traumatized futa naked, through the halls of Castle Chang’an with their hands bound, by a single leash attached to both of their collars.  They have just reached the Honeycomb.  NOW:

A perfect, sterile, silent blackness consumed the entire world behind the heavy iron door, swallowing all light, sound, and smell alike.  The moment they passed into it, the girls knew, to a moral certainty, that they were in a special place.  A sacred place, with the air of the forbidden, set aside from the humdrum world all around it.  But since they knew they were in hell, neither girl believed this place was actually sacred.  Indeed, reason suggested, if anything… the opposite.

The walls here were a deeper, more-perfect, glassy opaque black, carved with amazing precision into perfect rectangular prisms, matched so precisely no mortar could be discerned between them.  Only the faintest rectangular lines, visible as an interruption in the reflective surface, marked the end of one brick and the start of the next, betraying the fact that the walls were constructed of separate bricks rather than immense, continuous slabs. The air was cooler, dryer, and odorless here, with an underlying silence that made the girls aware how much noise they accepted every day as a normal part of everyday life. 

Just inside the doorway, within the larger chamber, was a cube—or, rather, the outline of one, 12 equal-length square columns eight inches across, arranged as two squares with four connecting beams joining their corners.  To enter, they stepped over one bar and “through” one side of the cube.  As they stepped into the cube, their skin began to tingle, as if their entire bodies were waking up after having been asleep.

“What’s happening?!” Penance asked.  “My body!” Chastity echoed her.

Channah laughed softly.  “Not to worry.  It’s a shield.”

“For what?”

“For the honeycomb.”

“Against what?!”

“Against you, you silly girls,” Channah chuckled.  “Your filth.  Have you taken a look at one another?”  She snorted.  “Think of it like magical hosiery or clogs.  It’s doing it to me, too, to prevent my dress and boots from dripping oil and water everywhere.  It’s quite pleasant, actually.”

“And dark…” Penny whispered, sounding haunted, as the door slammed closed behind them.  “and silent… and odorless.” 

“Aww… pooor sweetie,” Channah sympathized, sounding delighted, swooping the two girls into her arms for a tight hug.  “Ooh… darlings, you’re shivering!  Is this… reminding you of anything?”

“Yes, Domina,” they whined together, hugging her back fiercely, shivering not with their paresthesia but with the dread of memory of the senseless comatic holes they had been triggered into before exclaiming in reaction to another surprise, and again in unison:  “Domina!”

“What is it?” she feigned surprise, knowing they were staring at her, and knowing exactly why.

“You—you’re glowing!”

She snickered, fully aware what she looked like in here, and tickled that they sounded amazed rather than horrified.  Dropping her hands down to between their legs, she tested them and laughed even harder.  “Oh, girls… we are definitely going to have to explore this together!”

She appeared in the honeycomb in her demonic form, a wild, fey, fiercer-than-average version of her spicy red demon self.  All succubae did, in here.  There was something so primal about this space, this force, that it brought out the beast in demons, ancient and fierce.  Raising her hands to encompass the space all around them, she explained:  “The honeycomb absorbs or filters all light, all sound, all energy, all contamination of any kind, respecting only the stuff and energy of life itself.  This cube is a spell that protects the honeycomb from all the filth—well, what the honeycomb considers contaminants—accompanying… travelers through it.  Otherwise, the honeycomb would bar or absorb everything:  dresses, boots, jewelry, underwear… even the oil and dirt on your bodies.”

Something about the way she had said ‘travelers’ troubled Penny, who asked:  “And are we—Chas and I—travelers, Domina?”

Channah turned and looked at her slowly, her lips parting in genuine surprise, almost looking… embarrassed?  As if Penny had been peeping on her in her dressing chamber.  “What?  Whatever do you mean?”

Penny frowned, now certain of it and reading in her eyes that she knew it.  Suddenly gasping in fear that she was crossing a new line with Channah, but unable to bring herself not to ask:  “Are we… travelers, Domina?  Or filth?”

Her mouth formed a small ‘O’ even as something between scandal and titillation flashed in her eyes.  Of course, it was impossible to tell with her glowing a ruddy hue, but the expression on her face was one that suggested blushing.  “Oh Penny…” she whispered.  “My beautiful filth.”  And she leaned forward, kissing Penny softly on her lips.  Pulling both girls’ ears close to her mouth, close enough they shivered with the feel of her warm breath, she whispered even more softly:  “The honeycomb is natural—or supernatural, or unnatural, but certainly, not of our fashioning, and infinite.  The spell is ours, and every cube and…” she giggled, rubbing her hips against them suggestively “bit of filth we protect takes effort and attention.  Besides,” she hissed, her soft voice making them feel like they were part of a conspiracy, and shrugged:  “Why would we want to open the honeycomb to…” she laughed throatily.  “Any bit of filth that might be capable of finding the honeycomb and wandering into it?  It’s why I had to bring you here the long way around, through the Satanikoklus.  So I could… welcome you inside us.”

She giggled, releasing them, and twirling prettily:  “Ours is the only light not extinguished in the honeycomb.  And now you know:  you’ll want to stay close to me in the honeycomb, won’t you?  I’ll light the way for you, and protect you from the big, scary dark.”  A smile played around her lips.  “Filth.”

Then she took the girls under her arms, pulling their heads in tight to her own, and kissed each in turn on their ears, whispering “Princess” to Penance and “Fuckpuppet” to Chastity, making both of them blush, before leading them forward into the dark.

She was, indeed, the sole source of light in the honeycomb, a pale, faint, and eerie reddish glow coming off her and making her look ethereal or even spectral.  But there was nothing dead or even undead about her; she remained all Channah, all predator, all vibrant and exciting and completely alive—seemingly more alive than anything or anyone around her.  She remained the girls’ guidelight and beacon.  Always.

She murmured to them, making sure they remembered the next bar, the one forming the bottom of the cube away from the door so they wouldn’t stub their bare toes on the clear glass in the dark; and then she whispered to them “Put your heels back against the bar, girls.  That’s it, so you’re standing at the very edge of the cube behind you.  Now, the distance will always be the same.  So when we start forward, try to take steps that are the normal size for you, whatever that is, and count them off.  I’ll do the same, but for my pace.  Ready, let’s go.”  And she counted her own steps forward, setting the example:  “One.  Two.  Three.  Four.  Five—” she hesitated, stopping them both for a moment.  “It’s about to appear around us… don’t be surprised…  Six!”

Literature Section “06-120 The Queen in the Hive”—more material available at TheRemainderman.com—Part 120 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1200 words—Accompanying Images:  1931, 1947-1948—Published 2025-06-19—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

1662 06-78 It’s WAY too late for anyone to save you…
663 06-78 You belong to us now… plaything
1664 06-78 Oh, I’ll MAKE it fit…
1665 06-78 And then, I’m going to…

PREVIOUSLY:  For reasons of their own, Channah and Fang seem intent on training their qahramanat to degrade their jawari in front of legions of the damned.  Penny and Chas are already handcuffed, blindfolded, and gagged; but Channah and Esmeray are just getting started with them….  NOW:

Reliving the things that had been done to her, Penny made a quiet, desperate whining noise the rest of the world ignored, if it carried outside her body at all.  She had promised to trust.  She had to do that—had to trust in her Mistresses, and do what she had pledged to do.  Surely, that would get her through.  But why would it?  A traitorous part of her brain screamed that she had put herself into the hands of demons and madwomen.  A larger part told her she’d never had any choice in the matter.          

Heaven help me!

She made a whining noise nobody heard.  But she didn’t even know if heaven could hear into hell.  She sobbed, the sound immediately lost in the screaming din of the shouting devils and demons from below, eating sand again because Channah had stepped away for a moment, trying to tell herself she was grateful at least that being blindfolded, she no longer had to worry about her eyes.

Suddenly she jerked, feeling Channah’s fingers pinching her ear. 

“Be still!”  her Domina commanded her, an intimate whisper in her ear, as she pushed something through Penny’s ear canal inside her head.

As she did, that ear just… stopped.  More absolutely, more completely than Penny had ever experienced.  Unlike the thick, vague, bass sounds one could still hear in earmuffs or with hands over ears—suddenly, her left ear heard nothing.  The whole left side of her body felt—nothing!  Not a whisper.  She knew she still had sensation in her arms, legs, fingers, toes—but the totality of the silence on that side of her body caused her body to wonder, to demand, that the whole side of her had been numbed because nothing else made sense to it.

I promise I promise I promised….

When she felt Channah’s hand on her right earlobe, she jerked away, reflexively, even more strongly than she had before, crying out involuntarily, around her ball gag only to hear Channah laugh, quickly move her left hand under Penny’s chin, and pull her backwards and up into Channah’s shoulder. 

“Oh… it’s way too late for that, young lady.  You’re ours.  Body and soul.” 

And with that, she settled her hand against Penny’s neck to hold her tight, bit and held her ear in her teeth, enough to make Penny squeal in a painful protest, and used her right hand to press the second earbud in tight. 

Penny wailed in ineffectual, girlish protest, shocked as every scrap and hint of sound was eliminated from her world.  Her universe became instantly and totally silent.  It was as if she had been sealed away in a vault.  She was sure she was whimpering, but if she was, she could not even hear any hint of it through her own ears.

Her feet hurt, holding her weight in her high heels.  Her wrists were held tightly in the cuffs locked behind her back, her sight blinded by the blindfold, her mouth stuffed by the ball gag.  She was hyper-aware of the saliva gathering in her mouth, trying ineffectually to digest the heavy ball between her teeth; and of the fact that soon, very soon, she was going to start drooling, helplessly, like a dog. 

Smell!  She could still smell!  And Channah’s intoxicating, seductive succubus smell was perfect and brilliant, as if the scent of her managed to slip through the membranes of Penny’s nostrils and sinuses and seep straight into her brain, bathing and soothing it like a mother whispering to her baby at night…

Could she smell the sulfur of hell?  Yes, it was there, faintly; but like the sour under-note of a perfume, complemented and pushed to the subtle background by the sweeter and more-powerful notes of Channah, and Channah, and Channah…

There, down, far at the bottom, Penny found the subtle and vaguely-decayed smell of earth:  desert sand and black stone, perhaps mingled with a slight whisper of fungus lodged deep in the stones and their grout.

And she thought she smelled another, the scent of a person, hidden behind Channah’s at first, like a shy maiden in shadows behind her mother’s back, a musky smell demanding it be craved, a smell Penny couldn’t consciously remember ever smelling before, but suddenly identified because it was human and feminine and fiercely distinctive and she had been denied the benefit of most of her other senses:  Esmeray.

Now, still trying to recover some sense of normalcy and control after being deprived of hearing, Penny was turning her head from side to side and sniffing, trying to notice if there were any differences in different directions, and to confirm her memory of where she stood based on those differences.  But with Channah near—merciful as that was—there was no swirl of air or dust around them, nothing to bring more distant but localized smells to them.  If devils and demons had a smell separate from the brimstone and decay, she could not use it to locate herself.

It was at exactly that moment she felt it, fabric being pulled over her head.  A hood?  Really?  Wasn’t that overkill?  She already was unable to see or hear a thing—and as it came over her nose her shoulders slumped with the obvious realization.

It was a strong smell, a good one, nuanced and heavy and loaded with pheromones targeted straight at Penny’s deepest and oldest urges and memories:  Esmeray.  Esmeray’s panties, hung on her head.  She flushed as deeply red as she ever had, realizing what a stupid, helpless, pathetic idiot she was, and now looked like, dressed like a belle of the ball—the kinky bondage ball—in the middle of hell with a pair of another woman’s panties hung on her head like a scold’s bridle. 

She started crying, even before the next change, as whatever magic Channah had been talking about, or working, went into effect and she could smell nothing.  Nothing—immediately insisting to her brain she was locked in a clean, odorless, clinical space or Earthside desert.  In a way the silence and the darkness had not done, it fought; it persistently jarred, her senses fighting with her memory, the one insisting she was in a peaceful well-kept place on Earth, the other that she was on a sand-swept brimstone-stinking platform of Castle Chang’an in Hell, surrounded by her Mistresses and an army of demons and devils. 

Literature Section “06-78 The Sensory Deprivation of Penny”—Part 78 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1071 words—Accompanying Images:  1662-1665—Published 2025-04-30—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.

1657 06-77 I like making them pee their panties...
1658 06-77 …so quiet she could hear her own heart beat…
1659 06-77 Isolated as the womb
1660 06-77 I said fucking MAYDAY!!!
1661 06-77 TOO LATE… Too Late… too late…

PREVIOUSLY:  Queen Channah has decided to take an opportunity to teach Hanim Qahramanah about how to train her girls, and combines the occasion with an early start to her honeymoon.  The girls are blindfolded and gagged with their hands secured behind their backs and their legs cuffed.  For reasons of their own, Channah and Fang seem intent on degrading their jawari in public, before legions of the damned.  NOW:

“The next question for you is where you want to go.  I’ve seen you staring at your fellow qahramanah….” Channah began.

They both looked at the glass panel where Hong had taken her jawari to begin their dance.  They remained staring for a moment, mesmerized, at what Hong was doing to her jawari, and what her jawari were doing for their qahramanah.  Indeed, one could hardly resist the urge to gawk at something like that.  Esmeray finally tore her eyes away and looked back at Channah:

“I admit Hong… may be able to teach me something.”

“You think?”

“But… comparing myself to her may be too much… pressure the first time.”

“I’d tell you it’s not a competition, but, well… you’ve made it one.  You can’t avoid her for long.  However, I agree with you:  you need to focus first on your own hive.” Channah shrugged.  “And in fact, if you need extra practice time with your jawari, you may have it whenever their other duties permit.  I will inform Fang the normal limitations on hetaraslakos time are not to apply to you and your girls until Hong agrees you are qualified to instruct them.”

“Until she—” Esmeray began, eyes flashing at Channah until she saw the logical trap there.  Her shoulders relaxed as she backed down from trying to challenge something she had first taken as an insult.  “Yes, Mistress.”

Channah nodded approvingly and swept her arm towards the opposite edge of the platform, the jungle gym.  “May I suggest…?”  Esmeray nodded her assent.  “But before we take our girls to the edge…”

“Is that where we’re going?”  Esmeray asked.  “Perhaps the first time—”

Channah made a sound of negation.  “We always take them to the edge.  The very edge.”

“So the damned can see them?”

“That’s a consideration,” Channah agreed, “Although they hear, smell, and even feel everything we do here at a very visceral level, it’s even better if they have a direct line of sight as well.  But it’s as much, or even more, about the experience of the girls.  The first lesson they need to learn is how utterly, completely, and totally they depend on us.  We are their mothers” (both boys stiffened and gasped, reacting instinctively and viscerally to that shocking suggestion, one they never would have imagined) “in the fullest meaning of the word:  their protectors, their caretakers, their helpers, their managers, their teachers, their guides, their bond, their apron strings, their heart, their masters, their very world.  They must learn that first.”

“How?”

“By taking away almost everything from them, reducing them to helpless, almost senseless, creatures.  Having only enough control to hurt themselves if they do anything other than obeying us completely, and only enough sensation to feel and anticipate the consequences of their own actions.”

“By using these.”  She produced four small, red rubber pellets from a small leather pouch, holding them out so Esmeray could examine them curiously. 

“Red?  Like the blindfolds and—”

“Exactly,” Channah agreed approvingly. 

“But not in Fang’s gift?”

“They were in the fourth box.  Too valuable and too vulnerable for hucows—except you, once you’re shown how to treat them—to be messing about with them, because unlike the others they’re heavily magicked.”

Esmeray looked at Channah, frowning, then half-smiling.  “And…?”

“And what?”

“There’s something else.  Something…” her face faltered.  “Something you’re wondering how to tell me.  Because… I’m going to hate it.”

“Not after you understand,” Channah dissembled, but admitted:  “At first, you may be startled, but truly, you don’t need to be agitated.”

“I’ll—fuck.”  Esmeray’s hands subconsciously moved to her waist as Channah gave a wintry smile.  “The scarlet panties.”

“The scarlet panties.  You’ve been wearing them three days?”

“And nights.  It’s been disgusting.”  She made a revolted face and shivered.

“Then you’ll be happy to be rid of them, won’t you?”

Esmeray turned crimson herself and strangled:  “It’s mortifying.”

“It’s magic.  Everything has a price.  You know that better than most.  And you’ll need to do it all over again next week.  But first, attend carefully.  We are about to make these girls ours—utterly and completely.” Channah held up her palm with the four plugs, picking up one with her left hand and using her right hand to catch Penny by the ear, startling her.  “Be still,” Channah hissed, again intimidating the younger girl into compliance.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Penny, will you trust me?

I will, Qahramanah.

Do you promise?

Yes, Mistress.  I promise to trust you.

Do you promise?  I promise….

Blind, gagged, with her arms now bound behind her back, the words echoed through Penny’s head like a mantra, or a security blanket, she could only hold onto desperately.   Panic tried to rise like bile from her gut if she would let it, so she repeated the phrase desperately in her mind, flipping back and forth like her own stomach was doing, sometimes feeling comfort, at other times, realization of her own anxiety.  She had given up every bit of control she ever had, to move, to speak, even to see.  Helpless, almost senseless, creatures.   Channah’s words resonated too in her mind.  The awareness of her situation settled around her like a stiff, chilly blanket taken from a freezer, that she could do nothing but wait:  Wait, to be commanded or forced to the will of another—by her Domina, her Qahramanah, or anyone in whose hands they might choose to put her.  Taking away almost everything from them… if they do anything other than obeying us completely.  

Trust… she had promised to trust… It felt at the time like the exchange had been a mutual pledge, as Channah had talked about it:  It was Penny’s place to trust, and Esmeray’s to protect.  Only… Esmeray hadn’t actually promised to protect Penny.  Had she?  And even if Penny hadn’t promised to trust Esmeray, she didn’t have the ability to do otherwise anymore, did she?

Penny was helpless, utterly helpless as a newborn lamb who could barely even hold her feet, in front of a tigress who had asked her:  Will you trust me?

What kind of lamb would say that to a tiger?  And have meant it?  What had she been thinking?!

I promise…

She had to trust; she had made sure to put herself in that position.

Only… now, in the worst moments, she wasn’t sure.  Did she really?  Or were her thoughts those of a child whistling to reassure herself against the dark?

Memories crowded her and crowed at her, pointing her attention toward the satanikoklus where she had been married, the futon in the private chapel, even the nettle field and the pigsty:  A bed-wetting tour of all the places she had been taken advantage of, helpless to stop what was being done to her, what Her Grace the Countess of Warwick had wanted for her, demanded of her, commanded others to do to her.  But I love her… she loves me… doesn’t she? 

I promise…

Literature Section “06-77 Dance of the Qahramanat XII”—Part 77 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—1152 words—Accompanying Images:  1657-1661—Published 2025-04-29—©2025 The Remainderman.  This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions.  It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.